Marketing Olive Oil Products in the Tunisian Local Market: The Importance of Quality Attributes and Consumers' Behavior

This article is, to the best of our knowledge, the first investigation of Tunisian olive oil consumer behavior by the use of the conjoint analysis technique. The conjoint experiment was based on carefully selected olive oil attributes: type, taste, color, packaging, region of origin, and price. The results have important implications to improve the marketing of olive oil in the local market by focusing on key preferred attributes. Consumers were found to prefer more extra-virgin, followed by virgin olive oil, to pomace oil. They also showed higher preference for green colored olive oil with strong flavored taste. Contrary to a common belief in Tunisia, the region of origin attribute did not show significant effect on consumers’ purchasing decisions. The results show also that Tunisian olive oil consumers are price sensitive and therefore any price strategy to introduce bottled products should take into account consumers’ preferences for bulk purchase.     

A note on work-related values, budget emphasis and managers’ organisational commitment

Managers’ work-related values (WRVs) have important implications for designing appropriate management accounting systems (MAS) in organisations. This paper examines the effect of the interaction between managers’ WRV for innovation and budget emphasis (an integral part of MAS) on their organisational commitment. The sample consisted of 109 managers from production, marketing and support departments within Australian manufacturing firms. Hypotheses were tested using both quantitative and qualitative data collected by a questionnaire survey and post-survey interviews. The results indicate that the adoption of low budget emphasis led to high organisational commitment when managers’ WRV for innovation was high, but not when managers’ WRV for innovation was low. The results also indicate that marketing managers held higher WRV for innovation than production managers. The post-survey interviews provide further insight into how a more customer- and competitor-focused subculture of marketing managers and a more technical- and efficiency-focused subculture of production managers may promote the difference in their WRV for innovation, and affect their attitudes towards budget emphasis. The findings of the study have implications for design of performance evaluation systems for managers in functionally differentiated organisations.     

Transformational leadership style,market competition and departmental performance: Evidence from luxury hotels in Australia

This study examined the relationship between hotel departments’ financial and non-financial performance, market competition, and transformational leadership style. A self-administered postal survey was used to collect the data. Completed and usable questionnaires were received from rooms and food and beverage department managers of 56 hotels and resorts. The transformational leadership style, market competition, and departmental performance were measured using instruments adapted from previous studies [Bass, B., Avolio, B., 1994. Improving organisational effectiveness through transformational leadership. Sage Publication, Thousand Oaks, CA; Gupta, A., Govindarajan, V., 1984. Business unit strategy, managerial characteristics and business unit effectiveness at strategy implementation. Academy of Management Journal, 27 (1), 25–41; Khandwalla, P., 1972. The effects of different types of competition on the use of management control. Journal of Accounting Research, Autumn, 275–285]. The results of the study indicated that transformational leadership style was positively associated with the non-financial performance, which, in turn, was positively associated with the financial performance of the departments. However, no such relationship was found between market competition and the non-financial, and financial performance.     

The effect of subordinates’ gender on the difference between self-ratings,and superiors’ ratings,of subordinates’ performance in hotels

An appropriate means of subordinate managers’ performance evaluation in an organisation is crucial for identifying their strength and weaknesses for maintaining job commitment, and improving performance on on-going basis [Church, A., 1995. First-rate multirater feedback. Training and Development 49, 42–43; Church, A., Bracken, D., 1997. Advancing the state of the art of 360-degree feedback. Group and Organisation Management 22, 149–161; Atwater, L., Yammarino, F., 1997. Self-other rating agreement: a review and model. Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management. 15, 121–174]. The debate, on whether there is difference between subordinates’ self-ratings of their performance, and superiors’ ratings of it is better, continues. This is because the extant literature is inconclusive. This study contributes towards resolution of the debate at least for the hotel industry in Australia.     

Private incentives for adopting food safety and quality assurance

The competitiveness of food companies in national and international markets depends upon their ability to adopt production processes which meet food safety and quality requirements. Food safety and quality assurance affect the cost of carrying out transactions, and therein lies the private incentive for adopting voluntary quality assurance systems. While quality assurance systems have the potential to reduce transaction costs by serving as the seller's guarantee of safety or quality, they may also serve as trade barriers.     

Pathwise CVA regressions with oversimulated defaults

We consider the computation by simulation and neural net regression of conditional expectations, or more general elicitable statistics, of functionals of processes $(X,Y)$. Here an exogenous component Y (Markov by itself) is time-consuming to simulate, while the endogenous component X (jointly Markov with Y) is quick to simulate given Y, but is responsible for most of the variance of the simulated payoff. To address the related variance issue, we introduce a conditionally independent, hierarchical simulation scheme, where several paths of X are simulated for each simulated path of Y. We analyze the statistical convergence of the regression learning scheme based on such block-dependent data. We derive heuristics on the number of paths of Y and, for each of them, of X, that should be simulated. The resulting algorithm is implemented on a graphics processing unit (GPU) combining Python/CUDA and learning with PyTorch. A CVA case study with a nested Monte Carlo benchmark shows that the hierarchical simulation technique is key to the success of the learning approach.